


Rain and Wool

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:59:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3416756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur goes wandering in the rain when he ought to be in bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain and Wool

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of old fic from my tumblr. Originally a birthday gift for the dear Pale-Jonquil.  
> One of my first attempts at writing Belgium, called _Marie_ in this.

Marie wakes to the gentle rain outside, endless tiny splashes pattering comfortingly off the ground. The guttering gurgles quietly, and the rain plips, drips, soothingly drops from the roof’s edge, pattering off the slant of Marie’s open bedroom window and falling down to the ground below. The night is all soft dark (the dreaming peace of her people) and the breeze is just the _right_ sort of damp-cool, made for the press of warm skin, but when Marie sleepily turns in her bed, reaching for the one who had been curled close against her back when they’d first let their breaths slow and drifted off to sleep, she finds only space behind her, sheets and mattress missing both familiar body and lingering warmth.

There’s a moment of disconnect, alertness floating just out of reach for a few puzzling moments too long, but when it slides into place Marie frowns. She pushes aside the luxurious distraction of the sheets sliding against her skin and rolls all the way over onto her belly, elbows braced, lifting her head from the pillows. Her hair sticks to her cheeks.

The house is quiet.

There’s no humming from the light in her bathroom, no toilet flushing or sink tap running, no TV murmuring or bare feet shuffling around her kitchen downstairs. There’s nothing, nothing but the companionship offered by the falling rain, an English bag and briefcase still stuffed in the far corner of her bedroom and a tailored jacket with a green tie falling out of one of its pockets draped over the back of her dressing table’s chair.

Arthur’s.

(His dress-shirt, socks, shoes and trousers are all missing from her floor.)

All Nations have their strange moments and all Nations will sometimes do inexplicable things. _There’s a touch of destiny to it_ , Arthur had murmured to her once, held her (then) much smaller hand and danced with her under Roderich’s watchful eye. All his superstition, against all the high-minded philosophies of France. _There’s a touch of destiny to where we wander, those like us_.

But _oh_ , perhaps he hadn’t been to be trusted – the eighteenth century had still been fresh around them and he had been in _brocade_ then, something bright and teasing in his eye. England: a little taller than her, a little blonder, a little drunk on victory, still flush a few years on from formally drawing all his siblings on his island ( _his_ ) to his kingdom, to himself.

( _Willkommen, Vereinigtes Königreich Großbritannien_ , Roderich had said when Arthur had first joined them, a little less curt than he usually was with the acknowledging nod of his head.

_Verenigd Koninkrijk_ – Marie had started, curtsying, but a pointed _look_ from her Austrian guardian had had her sighing, changing language halfway through. Luxembourg had abandoned her (already) for the buffet table or some other pretence, bored with dancing empires and all their viciously civil games. Marie had always preferred to look her governors in the eye. _Großbritannien._

_Erzherzogtum Österreich_ , Arthur had replied to Roderich, with all due cordiality. And then, with a bow and all the devil in him to Marie, _mevrouw_.

His Dutch had still sounded like her older brother’s.)

‘Destiny’ for Nations is inexplicable, because Nations are made up of their people, and people are very, very strange. _Arthur_ is very strange, Marie thinks, yet she leaves her bed with a sigh, pulling on some of her clothes and padding barefoot down the stairs in her dark, quiet house.

As she thought, Arthur isn’t there. (He pulls away from her, sometimes, in the nights they sleep together with his arm across her hip and him curled against her back. He pulls away and into himself in his sleep, on the edge of Marie’s mattress with his face digging into his borrowed pillow. He doesn’t usually leave her bed, and if he does it’s because something’s taken him – inside or outside himself, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t usually leave her bed, too used to his dreams being soothed when she wakes and finds him turned away from her, when she draws gentle fingers down the bumps of his long pale back, his white cliffs and his city of dreaming spires, and Marie curls up to sleep sweetly around Arthur instead.)

Outside the rain continues falling, and it pitter-patters on when Marie steps out into it, boots and coat on, umbrella spread out protectively above her head. It’s so late out in her city-heart that it’s early. The wise are all abed, but perhaps the poetic, the insomniac and the stupid are like her, like Marie, breathing in deeply of the cool air, soothed by the rain (pitter-patter, pitter-patter, an endless _shhhh_ ) and the night-morning’s dim.

It takes some time to find Arthur – the Englishman has left parts of himself all over Belgian soil and stone, scratch-marks in Marie’s history, and it takes time for Marie to wander through all the ones nearby. She can feel the tug of _Nation_ still close by her, always, lets her heart slowly follow her feet as her feet carry her through her heart and –

And she finds him, a shock of shadow beneath a streetlight with an ember burning in his hand, staring though his oak tree in _la Pelouse des Anglais,_ in her park. Arthur had played cricket there once, with his officers, the night before _Waterloo_ had entered French vocabulary as a disaster. He’d played cricket there with his men, stripping off his beautiful uniform jacket and bowling under the sun in his white shirt, white britches, hair ruffled, face dusty, and his eyes so intent on his game he’d never seen her watching from the forest nearby.

Arthur’s in a white shirt again this time, but it’s soaked through, see-through where it sticks to him, plastered down his spine. Hair dripping in his eyes and cigarette burning to death in his hand he seems anything but focused, looking at things that aren’t there anymore to see. (Wet with rainwater, everything seems brighter and clearer than it should be for the hour, very fresh, very _too much_ to seem real.)

Marie approaches Arthur quietly, and tilts her umbrella back, the weight of the bar above the handle pressing into her shoulder. “Isn’t it dangerous for someone as pretty as yourself to be out alone at this time of night?”

Arthur jolts and –

Those are centuries in his face, when he looks at her. (Which age of her is he looking at?)

“…Marie,” he says. Unsurely.

“Arthur,” she says back, and takes another cautious step towards him. He doesn’t move, not to shiver, not even to flick off the ash gathering on his cigarette’s end. “What on earth are you doing out here in the dark and pouring rain, you silly man?”

“I -”

She waits.

The ash on his cigarette falls off by itself, revealing the cigarette glowing again, and Arthur’s fringe _drips._

Something _normal_ slips back into Arthur’s gaze at last (slotting in like he’s finally remembered wher- _when_ he is, with her, which her), and he colours slightly, a strange tint to his cheeks beneath the streetlight’s glow.

“I felt like a walk,” he says rather lamely, and Marie sighs at him, twirling her umbrella behind her slightly to shake off some of the clinging rain. “Did I wake you?”

“…You kept me _awake,_ ” Marie replies carefully, and winces a little apologetically at the flash of _remorse_ that flashes across Arthur’s face, a bomb hit to a building already crumbling in the dark. He _had_ worried her – it’s not so often he does things like this, not unless there’s a war on (but then, without the marching feet on the soil that is their skin, wars are harder to define these days), and the empty space where her fellow friend-lover-Nation _should_ have been had niggled at her nerves.

He _had_ worried her, somewhat, but not enough to let the daft man brood over it until morning.

“Come on,” Marie says, smiling, and moves the last few steps towards Arthur so she can offer the other Nation her hand. “Let’s go and get you dry before you drown in your own clothing.”

(When they had been young and small and his eyes has been as wide and hopeful as green-glass lanterns, it had been Arthur who had clutched the sleeve of _her_ tunic, back in the days _Arthur_ had still been a fresh thing on his own tongue. The language had been different then, but he had been hopeful, eager as he crouched at her side in a green filed full of his people’s softly bleating sheep.

_You’ll trade with me, won’t you?_ So young, and so nervous.

How could Marie have ever turned down something so sweet? She’d beamed back at him. _Of course! Let’s be good friends._

And Arthur had stared at her. _…Friends?_ As though he’d never heard the word.

Marie had just kept smiling. _Friends._

It had been a profitable friendship.)

Still seated, Arthur just looks up at Marie and snorts. “If all the centuries of rain at _my_ place haven’t finished me off yet, darling, I doubt a little Belgian rain could do the trick.” He’s starting to grin though, a slight quirk.

Marie pokes him with the toe of one boot. “I distinctly recall you bitching the exact opposite on at _least_ three times of relative note, sir. Anything Belgian is pretty hardy stuff, I’ll have you know.”

“Far be it for _me_ to deny Belgian craftsmanship,” the cigarette dies a final death, stubbed out on the seat beside Arthur. He stands in a shower of droplets, crowding under her umbrella, damp-cool save for the sudden warm mist of his breath, “but if you claim _rain_ as your new forte, you’ll probably end up drowning your older brother and put me out a job. I rather object to both, you know.”

Marie raises an eyebrow at him. “Of course you do.”

“Not that your brother couldn’t _do_ with a good dunking to get rid of some of his hair gel -” Arthur gets a foot pointedly stood on, and the quirk of his grin only gets _bigger._ Awful man. “But I do work with him.”

“Broer wouldn’t let a bit of water stop him from getting to work,” Marie says, fond and amused and weary all at once. (Her eldest brother is a lost cause.) Twirls her umbrella some more as Arthur leans into her, just a little. He has shadows under his eyes. “He’d turn into a mermaid- merman, if he had to.”

“With a shell bra?” The trod-upon foot gets more weight upon it – which Arthur takes as an excuse to lean against her more, cold and _wet_ , barely touching save for his forehead pressed against her shoulder.

This…this could almost be another moment between them in the bedroom, queerly close and queerly intimate, toe-upon-toe beneath Marie’s umbrella under the streetlight in her park at night, surrounded by the falling rain. Almost, because there’s something filling the space between their bodies, warmer than them both, and squeezed in along the edges are so many words not quite needing to be said. It’s not even Arthur’s full weight on her shoulder, the weight of England is far too heavy for her to bear alone, but this is…fine. Burdens are meant for sharing, in this world. Should be shared.

Burdens that apparently – although prior warning would have been nice – include Arthur’s wet hair sending rainwater trickling down the side of Marie’s warm neck.

Marie lets Arthur have a few moments, holds the quiet until she can’t repress the shiver his damp is causing, and then – “I hope you realise that you’re _soaking_ , Arthur Kirkland.”

He turns his head slightly – slightly, slightly, _enough -,_ his breath against the side of her throat. “My apologies, madam.” Marie shivers for another reason entirely, and one of his hand shifts, reaches out to gently cup the elbow of the arm keeping the umbrella above their heads. He lifts his head, and his eyes seem large and dark, all pupil, “May I walk you home?”

They walk home – to Marie’s home – together, slowly, mostly quietly. It rains all the way, rains when they get inside, and it rains when Marie takes them to her bathroom, switching on the light, stripping them both down, and pulling her guest into the shower with her to bleed colour and warmth back into both their bones.

Arthur doesn’t say much – it doesn’t feel like much of a speaking time -, but he smiles at the matching mess of their hairs when they towel themselves dry, curls up with her again in bed beneath the sheets and the duvet and the warm wool of the blankets Marie keeps folded at the foot of her bed. They’re both still a little shower-damp, but back-to-chest, nose-to-nape, Arthur’s arm across her waist and their legs carefully tangled –

It doesn’t matter so much.

“Stay put this time,” Marie murmurs to her pillow, settling down again with the dark soothing once more.

It rains, plip-drip-drop, steady and reassuring as the English heartbeat at Marie’s spine. Arthur doesn’t speak, but his lips are soft when he kisses her neck. Another apology, of sorts.

Marie sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> The first historical scene is set roughly about 1714/15, when Belgium was part of the Austrian Netherlands (1713 – 1792). Following the War of the Spanish Succession the area was given to Austria largely at British and Dutch insistence – as a shield between them and France. The British and Austrians were allies (although that soon got messed-up. Try looking up the Kettle War if you want a laugh).
> 
> The United Kingdom of Great Britain came about with the political union between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England (Wales then considered part of England) on 1 May 1707.
> 
> The Glorious Revolution in 1688 had left the British with an Anglo-Dutch monarchy. That ended in 1702 with the death of William III, but the Netherlands probably left his mark on the British Nations.
> 
> Mevrouw – miss. (Thanks to Dunya for helping me with and scaring me with Dutch.)
> 
> La Pelouse des Anglais (the Englishman’s Lawn) is an area in the Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos park in the City of Brussels, Belgium. On the eve of the Battle of Waterloo (17th June 1815) British soldiers played a game of cricket there, giving the area its name. In 1965, the then British Ambassador in Belgium planted an oak tree and unveiled a bronze plaque to commemorate the 150th anniversary of this sporting and historical event. [Here’s the plaque.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Pelouse_des_Anglais_Plaque.jpg)


End file.
